Four Ghosts Read online

  His vision evaporates. He can see only planes of color, columns of fiery light. The body on the ground is still, but inside it writhes a wormy mass of brick-red malice.

  Raising his arms, the thing sees his movements and swiftly fills up the casing of its battered costume. Varju stills. Once Mater Nihil is resurrected he is quite certain that the power he has to destroy her will destroy him as well.

  A brume of lavender light falls across his vision and there’s a body pressing against his. He blinks, his sight returns. Samira is in his arms and without even consciously commanding himself to do so, he falls into her embrace. The fury broiling within him simmers.

  Smiling tearfully, she holds his head in her hands.

  “I love you.”

  Varju rests his forehead against hers, and were either of them to look at each other beneath the veil, there would be nothing but light radiating between them.

  He signs back to her. “I love you.”

  “We love you. I’m so sorry.”

  She shoves him from her and he slams into the door, the breath exploding from his lungs.

  A panicked sound blurts from his mouth the moment he regains his breath. Samira rushes to the body and places her hands on either side of the woman’s head.

  Shrieking, Varju tries to lunge forward. His legs won’t move. He screams again and tears spring to his eyes and scald their way down his face.

  “Varju, please,” Samira sobs, the woman’s head still between her hands, “please forgive me. I have to take her back. If I don’t take her back she’ll never stop!” Her voice breaks on that last syllable, and Varju realizes that this has been her plan all along. At least, since she decided to come to 3842 Sawmill Lane. Samira already knew that the murder-suicides were Mater Nihil’s work. She only needed some way to get to her.

  He screams again, a crushing anguish blossoms in his chest and spreads through his limbs like cancer. She can’t. Not with their child. His family. His only true family. Gone.

  He screams her name, some approximation of it, and it trails from his mouth and hangs useless and limp in the air. He stretches his arms out as far as he can. He calls to every ounce of his inhuman power to release him from his paralysis.

  “You’ll . . . you’ll be free as soon as I’m gone.”

  She turns to him, still squatting beside the dead woman. “I’m so sorry I never told you. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  The woman’s fingers twitch. The heart beside her pulses once.

  Varju screams again.

  “Baby, it’s okay. She can’t hurt me. I am her. I am the daughter of Nothing.”

  A crack, a great blast of noise barrels through the room. It shakes the house to its foundations. Plaster rains from the walls and ceiling in streams of dust. Pictures fumble from the wall. The chest of drawers on the other side of the room crashes heavily to the floor. Beneath the woman’s body a massive fissure opens across the floor.

  The dead woman’s eyes open, two white orbs gleaming wildly in a swampy field of red.

  And one moment, Samira is kneeling beside her mother and in the next, they are gone.

  Into the abyss.

  Forever.

  Whatever force restraining him snaps, and he falls to the floor. He crawls toward the shrinking chasm. He isn’t fast enough. He reaches the center, its point of origin and finds filthy carpet.

  Nothing else.

  Varju leans back on his haunches and stares at the spot. A gleam catches his eye. Beside him are the long scissors, jammed into his Emissary. He grips the handles, twists the blades until the flesh and muscle and bone give, and pulls the shears away.

  Opening the blades, he presses one razor tip to the pulse point in his left wrist. A dot of blood wells up around the steel.

  “Grigoi.”

  The voice is so deep and bass-heavy it reverberates against his ribs. Varju whirls around. There is a dust-colored man standing in front of the door. His eyes are two black portals of beaming shadow. He wears a long-sleeved shirt of black silk, black jeans, and bare feet. The scissors fall from Varju’s hand.

  “Where is my daughter?”

  He raises his shaking hands to sign. He does not know who or what the man is, but there is something of him that feels molecularly familiar; as if the darkness bleeding from his sockets crystalized and became Varju’s bones.

  The man shakes his head. “Speak, Son of Nephilim.”

  And suddenly, his full tongue is lying placid yet whole in the bottom of his mouth.

  “How?” Varju’s hands clamp over his lips.

  “Do you know who I am, Son of Nephilim? I know you.”

  Varju shakes his head. Distantly, he finds it amusing that now that he can speak, he has no words.

  “I am the Emperor of—”

  “The Schism,” Varju breathes.

  The Fractured God nods once, crosses to the center of the room and gracefully folds his legs beneath himself and sits beside Varju. Varju’s heart pounds in his chest. He feels insane. Fractals of light dance through the air. There is too much to bear, too much to process.

  “What? What is happening?”

  The man holds up a hand and nods toward the master bathroom in the corner. The door to the smaller room is partially open, but the inside is dark. Every atom in his body wants to rush to that door, but he knows he must remain still.

  The door opens.

  Samira.

  ~*~

  His daughter and the Watcher are oblivious to everything else but each other. The God of the Chasm has no heart, but seeing his beloved child in the arms of her beloved and the spark of life pulsing happily in her womb gives him a sense of rightness. A sense of peace.

  Everything in the universe will someday burn. Everything that is will no longer be.

  Everything will be nothing. But right now, for Samira and Varju, they are everything to each other.

  Wrapped in her husband’s arms, Samira opens her eyes, senses a shift in the atmosphere.

  Across the room, her father’s figure begins to fade. Transparent, she can see the cursed door behind him open. She nods once at him, beyond grateful for his intercession. He returns the gesture, smiles, and is gone.

  Epilogue

  “In related news, the search continues for Detective Asher Corsino. As reported earlier last month, a team of detectives and independent investigators visited 3842 Sawmill Lane in hopes of uncovering additional information about the murder-suicide of Mallory Kirkland and her infant son, Jaxson. While at the home, the investigators discovered the mutilated body of Jayson Kirkland. What else happened in the home that day, no one knows. Or at least, they aren’t talking. Detective Tom McBride retired from Boston homicide after twenty two years on the force and refuses any requests for interview. The other investigators have not been heard from since and their identities remain a mystery. Detective Corsino however was part of a press conference held a few days after the investigation. Approximately seven hours after the press conference, Corsino all but disappeared. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is urged to contact local authorities. Coming up, highlights from this weekend’s high school football games.”

  Varju presses the ‘off’ button on the remote control and the screen goes black. He flops back onto the couch.

  Beside him, Samira places a hand on his knee. “It wasn’t your fault, Honey.”

  “Yeah,” he says. On the other side of him Mally has somehow managed to contort her massive frame into a tight ball. He ruffles the top of her head, never imagining he would feel guilty about something potentially unpleasant happening to Asher Corsino.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Alexandru says, standing from his seat on the floor. “It probably is his fault. Entirely.” He yawns and stretches.

  “You aren’t helping.” Samira smirks. “I really think he just ran off. I mean, after he drove off.”

  ~*~

  After Varju and Samira made it out of the master bedroom, they found McBride, Alexandru,
Serghei, and Mally in the dining room, all of them on edge. While the home was still none of them had any desire to remain there and the six of them ran from the house as quickly as they could, injuries aside. It wasn’t until they’d all piled into Serghei’s van (even McBride, much to his embarrassment, but how the hell was he going to drive home alone after seeing what he’d seen?) did they realize that Asher was missing. Samira peered out of one of the windows facing the Kirkland’s home and saw Asher stiffly walk from the front door toward his car. She called his name, but he ignored her, got into his Mustang and peeled out.

  ~*~

  “Well kids, I’m calling it a night. Thanks for dinner, guys.”

  Serghei stands from his seat in the opposite recliner and stretches. “Yeah, me and this worthless dog should probably get home.”

  At the door, they all exchange hugs. Serghei, mostly to irritate Varju, rubs Samira’s growing belly for luck. Sax and Mally sniff each other’s posteriors while their respective master’s apologize and pull them apart. Varju and Samira stand in the doorway of their warm house and watch their friends clamber into their individual vehicles. Samira’s favorite part of their monthly dinners is the part when they depart. Not because she doesn’t want them there, but because it is for her what family does. Family is there when you leave a place of warmth and comfort and care into a place that’s dark and cold and reassures you that the door will always be open when the dark begins to smother and the cold begins to sting.

  Honking as they drive past, Samira and Varju wave and he closes the door behind them. Locking it shut, he watches with something like awe as his wife, a survivor of horrors that he can only imagine, heads into the dining room and gathers the dishes from the table.

  “Want some help?” he asks as he follows her.

  “No,” she replies grinning. “It’s your night to do dishes, hombre. I’m just bringing them to you.”

  He laughs. A moment of silence ticks by.

  “Samira,” he says quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “If Corsino comes back, you know what I’ll do to him. Don’t you?”

  “Here,” she says and hands him a large bowl that used to be filled with mashed potatoes. “Yes. I know. You have to stop thinking about him, though.”

  Dishes cleared, they go to the kitchen and begin their routine. Varju fills the sink with soapy water, Samira squeezes into the bench of the kitchen nook. The novel she’s reading lies on the table. She holds the paperback between her hands.

  “I can’t.” Varju says finally, the sleeves of his black sweater pushed up to his elbows and his hands submerged in the sudsy water.

  “You can. He can’t hurt me, Crow. He can’t hurt Aspen, either. And even if he tries, my husband is a terrifying fallen angel human hybrid thing that’s been blessed with some extremely horrifying powers by his father in law.”

  Chuckling, Varju nods. “True. Although, I’m not sure what I’m worried about. He comes at you, you just open up a hole in the world.”

  She nods, “Yeah, basically.”

  The two of them laugh and Samira watches the worry coil away from Varju’s lean body in wisps of ether. She places one hand on her belly, leans back into her seat, and reads.

  ~*~

  Alone in the lightless place, Asher Corsino questions the dark.

  “You will make me strong?”

  His voice echoes throughout the chamber and for a moment, his heart stops in fear that She won’t respond.

  “Your faith falters.”

  Her voice is every anguished cry that goes unheard in a dismal room. He has heard her voice whisper to him from the void for weeks on end, but her full voice is so horrifying that the first few times she addressed him he pissed himself. Now, an ardent acolyte, he saves his urine in jars in supplication.

  “Never, I will never falter. I am a vessel. I am your vessel.”

  “Yes,” Mater Nihil says as she materializes before her supplicant. She is a Gigerian goddess carved from the skin of night. Her eyes are silvered orbs, her flesh pitch black. She is naked, and even though they are surrounded in total darkness, she radiates her own delicate lambency. He kneels before her, unashamed of his growing hardness. She has allowed him to pleasure her with his mouth and he is eager to do so again.

  “You are, indeed?”

  Asher opens his arms, tilts his head back.

  No hesitation, no fanfare.

  He is consumed.

  The vacuum of space engulfs him. His ears are filled by the howling dirge of the void. His bones crackle and crumble to dust in the hollowed sockets of his muscles. His atoms are pried apart by her Emptiness. He is becoming formless.

  Searing pain engulfs his tongue, scalds his nostrils, and chars the pink tunnel of his throat. He is cauterized, baptized, sanctified from the inside out.

  Mater Nihil watches the man writhe in agony. Frater Fractura banished her to the forgotten realms, sealing her inside until the end of time. He did not, however, count on someone seeking her out. Such curiosity is like a rope tossed into the sea.

  Asher Corsino will become her portal. Her entrance. Her way back into the world.

  Back to Samira.

  The void is the womb is the mouth is the grave.

  “Shallow Grave”

  Photo by Mike Jansen

  William Cook

  Dead and Buried

  Donny Cox hated high school although it hadn’t always been that way. In fact, he had really enjoyed his first year and looked forward to each passing day. He loved the bustle of the other kids and the ritual of getting dressed in his school uniform and then the walk to school each morning. Then things started going wrong at home. His mother and father began fighting, sometimes physically, and his father began drinking while his mother took to staying away from the house at every possible opportunity. Things had been good before with fond memories of family outings and attentive parents, but it seemed to Donny that lately things were falling apart. The mother who had fed them, hugged them, read to them at nights, had grown distant as their father steadily drank himself senseless. They used to do things as a family, even attending church services at the local parish most Sundays, but now that seemed a lifetime ago for Donny and his little brother Max.

  One particularly violent evening, as the boys crouched in the darkness of Donny’s bedroom closet, they listened to the fighting and thumping and their mother’s screams punctuated by slapping sounds. Then nothing. The sound of silence hung heavily in the air as the boys clutched at each other huddled in the darkness. That was the last time they had seen or heard their mother and, despite her absence, the house now rested with a solemn peace that filled the void left by her sudden disappearance. Donny enjoyed the peace and quiet and tried not to think about what might have become of his mother. Little Max, however, needed comfort from his older brother as he missed her terribly. At night, in the small upstairs bedroom they shared together, if Donny wasn’t giving his brother a reassuring hug he would lay awake listening to his brother sobbing quietly into his pillow. He felt sorry for Max and had grown bitter when he thought of his Mother and her perceived abandonment and neglect.

  A month or so after the night of the big fight, as they sat at the dining table eating cereal for dinner, Donny’s father informed the boys that their mother was living with her sister somewhere far away and would not be returning any time soon. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the boys had last seen their mother so the news came as no surprise or real shock. Donny had grown indifferent to her existence and felt equally as numb regarding his father and his drunken habits. With his mother now absent, his father had taken to drinking in the morning on a daily basis. Donny would come down stairs after washing and clothing himself to find his father standing at the kitchen sink, a faraway look in his eyes as he stared out of the window, sipping at a cup of warm whisky. The old house fell into disrepair with each passing month and Donny’s father seemed to mimic the effects of the ravages of time and neglect. He grew a full be
ard and lost weight, apart from the swollen paunch that swelled his midriff. His clothes hung heavy on his sloped shoulders and he started to walk with a limp as Gout took hold. The only time he left the house was to go to the liquor store to stock up on supplies for the weeks ahead. Donny was glad that he had school to look forward to each day, but he had no idea that the nightmare at home would soon follow him wherever he went and become part of every minute of his life.

  His father had fallen into a deep depression and was hospitalised briefly after a failed suicide attempt. Max found him unconscious in the bathtub with an empty 40 oz bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor and superficial cuts to both his wrists. The bathtub was filled with a crimson hue and Max had immediately thought his father was dead before ringing the ambulance. The brothers had looked after themselves for a week until their father returned home in a taxi, both wrists bandaged and a blank stare on his pale face. Donny and Maxwell stood at the door as their father slowly climbed the steps and brushed past them, entering the house without a word, before climbing the stairs to his room and closing the door behind him.

  A fresh batch of mail started arriving on a regular basis and Donny soon found crumpled statements from the welfare department, listing his father as a “Sickness Beneficiary.”

  Donny knew all about living frugally and was curious as to how his father managed to produce the weekly food ration of a twenty-dollar bill left on the kitchen table each Thursday night. The statement’s showed that his father received an ‘allowance’ because of his “mental health status” and that this stipend was to be used “to provide adequate provisions for the upkeep of the household and the food and clothing of the two Cox siblings.” Donny was an intelligent kid at sixteen and mature beyond his tender years. He was in charge of doing the shopping and he made sure to buy food that was cheap but nutritious for him and his brother. He worried about his father but was aware that he tried to look after himself, despite Donny having to remind him that the utility bill needed paying whenever it arrived in the post.